New York gun law heightens emotions, county workloads

Within days of it becoming available, thousands of people in Dutchess and Ulster counties took advantage of a provision in the state's new SAFE Act allowing them to keep their status as pistol permit holders out of the public eye.

"We are being inundated with (requests)," Ulster County Clerk Nina Postupack said of the state opt-out forms being filed by permit holders. "At the moment, it's a bit overwhelming."

Postupack said that in the first four days of the option being available, 550 of the county's 20,000 pistol permit holders filed opt-out forms with her office.

In Dutchess County, where there are 38,000-plus pistol permit holders, more than 1,000 of them filed the form within the first four days, according to County Clerk Bradford Kendall. A week later, Kendall said, that number had risen to 2,200.

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The provision of New York's Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act that allows personal information about pistol permit holders to be kept secret was included in response to an outcry over the decision by a Westchester County-based newspaper, The Journal News, to publish a map with the addresses of all the gun permit holders in its readership area. The map was published in the days following the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at the Newtown, Conn., school by 20-year-old Adam Lanza sent government officials scrambling to respond and set off intense debates about gun ownership, school security and personal safety.

Across the Mid-Hudson Valley, school districts quickly moved to tighten security in and around their buildings. The Rondout Valley school board added funding to its budget for a school resource officer in the coming school year and agreed to give the Ulster County Sheriff's Office access to its surveillance camera videos.

In the Kingston school district, officials have blocked the high school's front driveway during student arrival and dismissal times and are investigating the possibility of tapping state funding to help cover the cost of a proposed $92 million high school renovation. Superintendent Paul Padalino has said state funding under the SAFE Act is available for infrastructure improvements designed to improve security.

New Paltz Superintendent of Schools Maria Rice said her district is looking at creating buzz-in system at district schools and installing panic buttons in each building.

Also, state police and the Ulster County Sheriff's Office have started conducting random walkthroughs in area schools.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Legislature led the nation in adopting stringent gun-control legislation when, 33 days after the Sandy Hook killings, they enacted the SAFE Act, considered to be the most comprehensive law of its kind in the United States.

Almost immediately, gun rights advocates began rallying in opposition to the law, because of both the restrictions the legislation imposes and the hasty manner in which it was adopted.

The fact that the bill made it through both houses of the Legislature and was signed by Cuomo within 24 hours of its introduction has been a point of contention for opponents and supporters alike.

For supporters, the haste in which the measure was ushered through, unpalatable as they say it was, is no reason to repeal the entire law.

Critics say the manner in which the SAFE Act was adopted is symptomatic of more serious problems with the law.

"It was done the way it was to avoid having a discussion about it, and as a result, we've got a law that was pushed through without discussion and it has holes in it, leaving people confused with how to comply with the law and wondering whether they are doing something illegal just by doing something they had done before," said Elmer LeSuer, second vice president of the Federated Sportsmen's Clubs of Ulster County.

LeSuer was one of nearly 1,000 people who turned out for a recent meeting of the Ulster County Legislature at which a resolution calling for the repeal of the state law was being considered. Although some of those attending the meeting at the Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston spoke in support of the state law, the vast majority of the speakers opposed it.

County lawmakers across the state have sided with opponents to the new law.

Locally, the legislatures in Ulster and Greene counties have passed resolutions opposing the process by which the law was adopted as well as several of its provisions. A similar resolution is expected to be passed by the Dutchess County Legislature on Monday, and the Sullivan County Legislature is scheduled to vote on its own resolution later this month.

Many critics of the SAFE Act say their opposition to the law is not about the way it was enacted, but about how, in their opinion, it conflicts with Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They say the amendment gives them the unfettered right to have weapons as a first line of defense for their family and their property and, if necessary, against the government.

Opposition to the SAFE Act also has come in the form of concern over the practical application of the law's many facets -- some which have yet to be fully fleshed out -- and its impact on residents, businesses and local governments.

The new state law prohibits guns with more than a seven-round magazine, but standard gun magazines hold 10 rounds, leaving many to wonder whether manufacturers simply will stop dealing with New York gun dealers rather than try to work within the constraints of that law.

Maria Ruger, owner of Ruger Custom Guns in the town of Ulster, noted another provision in the new law requires gun dealers to perform background checks on individuals looking to sell their guns. The law, she said, allows the businesses to charge $10 for each background check it runs. But her business already charges between $50 and $75 to run a background check for individuals making a private gun sale, she said.

"The records that are required to be kept are the same as all the others. It is taking my time and causing me to store large quantities of records, and I'm not even being reimbursed at even the going rate," Ruger said. "We are a business. We have overhead. I will do it for a reasonable rate. I will not do it for 10 bucks."

In the Dutchess County Clerk's Office, Kendall said the law's provision that the county process all the opt-out forms could bog down his staff.

At present, Kendall said, his office processes 100,000 documents each year. If half of the pistol permit holders file opt-out forms this year, that would mean an additional 20,000 documents would have to be processed.

Kendall said it could cost the county more than $32,000 to process the 2,200 opt-out forms he's received so far and that if one-quarter of the 38,000 permit holders in Dutchess County file opt-out forms, it would cost the county more than $150,000 to process the requests.

"I think it's somewhat disingenuous to suggest that we can process these at no cost to the county," Kendall said.